In Conversation with Ian Breckon - Canterbury

The dawn of the Victorian era: the world is changing rapidly. Poverty and the workhouse cast long shadows across rural England, and a traditional way of life is coming to an end.

In the villages and fields of Kent, the discontented find an unlikely champion in John Nicholls Tom. Calling himself 'Sir William Courtenay', he appears to the local magistrates and gentry as a madman, a charlatan, or a dangerous radical. But for the labouring people he is the New Messiah, come to lead them in a revolt against the forces of oppression, and to herald the end of the world.